Any industry veteran perhaps looking for a change ?

[CarlGrey 0]

Apologies if this horribly off-topic or spammy. I just feel that this might be the best place where I can find somebody that might want to stay in the industry but pivot in actual business approach to something scalable but easy to manage with less of the usual industry problems. Over around 10 years I developed powerful vehicle sourcing software (the core bit provisionally patended in the USA in 2011) tracking around 4 million cars per year online in the UK the moment they come online - across thousands of combined sources - from private seller classified ads in local newspapers to small local dealers to large countrywide franchise dealerships. It is developed to nett £10 000 per month and to require only 2 employees to manage.The software goes online on 31 Jan 2018 and I am looking for a buyer to take over at £250k. I have two initial investors to repay and with the extremely long development time, repayment has become critical - hence the sale.

[trade vet 704]

Hi Carl,things have moved on a lot in the past 10 years.Sourcing stock has never been easier for most of us.Even most of the smaller auctions are now geared up for on line buyers.For £250k,today you could probably buy an established dealership with audited accounts and a £5m T/O.I wish you best of luck.

[CarlGrey 0]

Thanks for the feedback. We will factor in the auction contribution and make sure we cover that adequately. A buyer we pitched to in Malta had the same question (broader in that we had to analyse several markets for comparable returns on investment in addition to just the UK used car market). The average we could buy - in analysis of 30 current UK used car dealerships for sale - for £250k, was a turnover of just under £1m for an average annual net profit of £80k. My previous post was extremely brief - sorry - the software has been set up to serve the USA and Canadian markets (as well as smaller Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa and Malta) with the UK market as base start. The size of the international markets combined is roughly 6 times that of the UK. With a hit-rate overall of 1:100 the international profit contribution (phased in over 36 months) is recurring £45k per month. This is substantial compared to £80k per year - admittedly growing to this point only after 3 years.